A friend of mine has a nice 4'X8' 1/2" steel welding table. What he did was
to weld 4 square sockets to the legs and then fabricated castor brackets
that would fit in the sockets that would hold the base above the floor level
about 1/2" when installed. On each end of the table he welded a bracket
with a little cam that he can push down and lift the end of the table high
enough to install the casters into the square sockets.

The cam was simple. He just had some 2" round steel that he drilled an
offset hole into and then welded on a bar for the handle.

He also put the square sockets on his acorn table and can rig them on
anything else he needs to move. This way he only needs one set of wheels
and never has to futz with dollies or anything.

I suppose if you had a cast base and welding would be difficult, you could
set the machine in a frame and accomplish the same thing. Using this idea
you could also make leveling feet to slide in the sockets also.

--

Roger Shoaf

About the time I had mastered getting the toothpaste back in the tube, then
they come up with this striped stuff.

"John" wrote in message
...
I've been trying to work through a fairly challenging issue and
thought I'd open a question up to the group for discussion.

Assume there is a rather large and very heavy piece of equipment,
say... 6'h x 2'w x 3'd and 500lbs. The machine is made of steel, and
there are plenty of places around the base that would make fine weld
points (if necessary). Also assume the machine needs to rest on it's
base to operate (can't just affix wheels to bottom), but it also needs
to be able to be moved randomly around a shop by a single individual
without a forklift. For grins, it's a 100lb. 5' tall female.

How would you modify the machine for this requirement? Oh yeah, you
have to do it with a budget of $100 or less (hopefully a lot less...)

My first two thoughts are as follows:

1) Build a frame which fits around the base of the equipment out of 2"
square tubing. Attach 4 heavy duty wheels to the bottom of each
corner of the frame. Somehow weld this frame to the base of the
equipment in a manner that allows the frame to swing upwards, allowing
the machine to rest on it's base, but also allowing the use of a hand
operated hydraulic jack (a small car jack perhaps?) to raise the
equipment up to a point at which it is off the ground and the wheels
are free to roll the machine. (Hope you could follow that.)

I'm not quite sure how to best accomplish connecting the rolling frame
to the machine base so it can be jacked up, so if anyone can help
complete this idea it would be great.

2) This one breaks the $100 rule... but I'm just tossing out ideas.
Have you ever seen the hand operated pallet movers they use at WalMart
or other retail stores to move pallets around? Well, you'd have to
get one of those, and then you could simply weld on a couple of
channels underneath the base of the equipment and use that pallet
mover to roll it around.

I really, really don't like that idea, but had to throw it out there.

Any other ideas are greatly appreciated.

John